Ganymede and Titan

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Me²: Capsule

First published 12th August 2003.

Recorded: 1/11/1987
Broadcast: 121/3/1988
Written by: Rob Grant and Doug Naylor
Directed by: Ed Bye

What is it?

Rimmer creates his perfect companion - an identical duplicate of himself. He moves out of his quarters he shares with Lister and starts rooming with his doppelganger. At first things are blissful, but the course of true love never runs smoothly, and soon the two Rimmers find themselves locked in a conflict so fierce, only one of them can survive.

Production Notes

Due to the huge amount of split-screens in the episode, a load of it was pre-recorded. As well as all the scenes where there are two Rimmers, the shots of the skutter hitting the wall and Tony Hawks's commercial were shot on the day before the audience arrived.

Me² was the last show to be written, as a previous script, in which Rimmer trys to create a new body using parts of Lister's, was dropped. Therefore, this episode benefits from being written with the actors in mind, rather than being mostly written before casting took place, as per the rest of the series. It is also the first episode to feature Holly's face in the main bunkroom set.

In the cinema scene, we catch our only glimpse of Mugs Murphy - Lister's favourite cartoon character, who Rob and Doug initially intended to use more in the series. This piece of animation was shot on 16mm film by the BBC Graphics Department, and the music used was Getting The Runaround by The Hedgehoppers. Elsewhere in the scene, the music used is Sari by Keith Prowse (Indian restaurant commercial) and Dancing On Ice (music playing before Mugs Murphy starts).

Book Version

The majority of the events in this episode also took place in Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, starting in Part Two, Chapter Twenty-Two. In the book, Rimmer duplicates his disc and projects the copy from the Nova 5. The Rimmers take on the responsibility of renovating the crashed ship, which they succeed in doing, but not before blowing out half of the skutters and accidentally breaking the ship into three pieces.

In Part Two, Chapter Thirty-Three, Rimmer's Gazpacho Soup story is told in much greater detail. He tells of how he hired an escort to act as his girlfriend for the dinner, but she ran away with all of his money. He explains her absence to the officers by saying that she was killed in a car crash, but he's over it now. Some additional embarrasing events in the dinner include Rimmer accidentally taking an item of cutler from the diner next to him, and forgetting the punchline to a killer joke (remeniscent of the TV-version of Better Than Life).

Later, in Part Three Chapter Four, one of Rimmer's fantasy dinner guests, The Prince Of Wales, suffers a similar Gazpacho-based embarrassment, but thankfully Rimmer is on hand to tactfully correct him.

Deleted Scenes

The recent DVD release featured:

Re-Mastered

Recycled Ideas

The entire NORWEB sequence is recycled more or less word for word from a Dave Hollins: Space Cadet sketch, featurred in the second episode of the second series of Son of Cliché, as well as in the Red Dwarf Omnibus. Also, in this episode we see a poster of a monkey on a toilet, which is discussed in another Son of Cliché sketch, Freshers.

Gazpacho Soup Day is based on an incident that was narrowly avoided by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. At a meeting at Thames Television, the pair were bewildered when they recieved cold soup, but fortunately they refrained from complaining.

Videos/DVDs:

The episode is (or at least was) availiable on the following releases:

Credits

Rimmer Chris Barrie
Lister  Craig Charles
Cat  Danny John-Jules
Holly  Norman Lovett
Captain Hollister  Mac McDonald
Written by  Rob Grant and Doug Naylor
Music  Howard Goodall
Developed for Television by  Paul Jackson Productions
Graphic Designer  Mark Allen
Visual Effects Designer  Peter Wragg
Properties Buyer  Mike Fallon
Assistant Floor Manager  Dona Distefano
Production Assistant  Alison Thornber
Unit Manager  Mario Dubois
Production Manager  George R. Clarke
Costume Designer  Jacki Pinks
Costume Assistant  Lesley Staves
Make-up Designer  Suzanne Jansen
Vision Mixer  Jill Dornan
Camera Supervisor  Mike Jackson
Technical Co-ordinator  John Spicer
Videotape Editor  Ed Wooden
Lighting Director  John Pomphrey
Sound Supervisor  Tony Worthington
Designer  Paul Montague
Executive Producer  Paul Jackson
Produced & Directed by  Ed Bye

Uncredited Extras: Tony Hawks (commericial voice-over), Stephen Holt (Rimmer double), Peter Ingham, Les Allen, Nigel Peevers, Kev James (crew).